


The Binary Spaces Between

by Markition



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AI!Cas, AU, M/M, The Binary Spaces Between, dystopian au, hunters in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Markition/pseuds/Markition
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New Detroit, 367 years after the Last War tore the old world to ribbons. Cities have grown up, levels upon levels of metal and apartments and shopping centers, while the global giant CitiNet has ensured every citizen has equal access to the "technology of today." AIs run every major system in the city, and the pervasive hologram public service announcements reassure the good people that CitiNet is always there to serve. In the age of super personal computers, virtual reality is everything.</p>
<p>Enter Dean and Sam, two brothers hunting a monster from the polluted wastes that is neither alive nor dead, and that no one wants to believe in. They live and they hunt beneath the radar, following commands from an absent father, playing by the rules he sets. Then they meet an AI that isn't supposed to exist, accidentally steal it, and everything just got so much more complicated for the Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Binary Spaces Between

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. The characters of the main cast belong to the Supernatural team. Any original characters appearing are minor and necessary for the plot, but belong to me. The setting also belongs to me. 
> 
> Warnings for violence, intolerance, and political corruption. I'll add more warnings as they appear.

Dean wasn’t a computer guy. They were useful, they had the internet (and porn), but he tended to be bad news for any computer he touched. He liked to think they had a mutual understanding, sort of a “don’t get in my way and I won’t break you nine ways to Sunday,” but that was where the understanding ended. No savvy tech guy come to save the day, not even a little bit.

Computers involved things that Sam referred to as “code,” which he insisted was a sort of language. Dean thought code was what you got when a toddler got ahold of the keyboard and decided it was the latest line of Hot Wheels 10.2. Sam had explained why that was incorrect very calmly, then not so calmly, then finally so loud he went red in the face and had to take a walk before they could go get dinner one night three years ago. After that, they agreed to disagree and Dean was never allowed to touch Jess again. Jess was, of course, their homebrew sPC that was more or less attached to Sam at the hip. An sPC was a necessity in New Detroit, the homebrew part (from Dean’s understanding) just meant they could slip in a few backdoors and hang out under the radar. The virtual radar.

Actual, physical radars and backdoors was Dean’s specialty. If he could touch it, he could deal with it. Code and virtual crap...not so much. That was the core of Dean’s computer problem, really. He didn’t understand computers beyond the whole point-and-click, and computers _ran the city_. Virtual reality was everywhere, and even the ninety year old woman next door new how to access CitiNet with her handheld.

He was an island of sanity in an escalating madhouse. Literally escalating, actually. They’d just completed ND--100 last week. That meant 107 levels of nasty, twisted metal, crowded apartments and smoggy air. Good ole New Detroit.

“Dean stop _staring_ they’re gonna notice us.”

The GovTechs across the tracks were very involved in guiding their cargo on its partially functioning hover plate into the CitiNet Database Center. It was a big, big crate and that was a tiny, tiny door. They weren’t going to notice anything. Dean was mostly sure of that.

He smiled at Sam because he was being a paranoid shit and Dean wanted to make sure his brother knew it. “We’re fine. You got that thing booted up, right? I’m just gonna go for it, I don’t want no shitty loading times.”

Sam placed a hand protectively on the tablet face hanging from his belt. “Dad wants five _years_ of footage. The download is going to take a couple minutes.”

“You can’t tell it to go faster?”

“She’s got the latest USB5 in the city. There’s nothing faster than Jess.”

Once acronyms started pouring out of Sam’s mouth, Dean lost interest. He peered down the tracks, trying to find the tram while Sam prattled on about his sPC and how good its specs were. The trams traveled around 200 mph at top speed, and zipped around the city like angry hornets. There were no last minute dives out of the way; if you saw one coming at you, it was already too late. But the Winchesters wouldn’t be hunters if they couldn’t handle one measly set of deadly tracks.

He found the tram three levels up. The headlights just barely filtered through the piping for the tracks, a distant humming monster crouched at a ND-46 station. That gave them four minutes to get across. More or less.

Next issue was the GovTechs. There were three, two there to navigate the hover plate and the third dealing with the touch interface of a sPC. They’d finally gotten the cargo through the door and the sPC boy was dealing with getting the door to shut behind them via some outdated touchpad controls on the wall beside the entrance. It was a top-down garage style door with a poor motor that moved at the speed of a hopeful snail.

Dean grinned. They weren’t even going to have to hack their way into that building. They could just slide right in.

“Come on,” he said to Sam.

Then they were running.

The tracks were six metal bars, every other one was electric. Thin metal mesh flooring ran beneath for maintenance, and that was what the brothers sprinted across now. Dean combat rolled under the first set of tracks, popped his head up to check on the GovTechs, then rolled under the second set. All three of the government employees had their backs turned like the poorly trained chumps that they were. Dean silently thanked the terrible and utterly worthless GovTech training programs as he climbed over the fence and landed at the CitiNet back entrance. He was three yards away from the sPC boy and still none of them noticed.

He also had to thank the very loud door motor, because Sam’s landing was not nearly as stealthy as his own.

They hid behind the outer wall in unison, just in case someone noticed. When he was sure they were clear, Dean made a sharp horizontal ‘you need to be fucking quiet’ hand gesture at Sam. Then he hustled under the closing door, Sam close behind him.

The inside of the Database Center was not nearly as derelict and rusted as the outside. While it was pretty typical for a CitiNet building, Dean was comforted. At least all those tax dollars were going to something useful, like natural fluorescent lighting and polished black flooring. It was so clean that he would’ve eaten a three course meal off that floor without hesitation.

Dean hugged the wall, zipped his way over to a small stairwell in the corner of the huge storeroom. The back entrance led to a warehouse-sized area filled with covered crates, it seemed. Probably out-of-service server towers, or something. Dean recognized the space from the floor plan he’d memorized last night, and he knew there was a camera blind spot under those stairs for the same reason.

Behind the stairs was a small, unassuming air vent. A few twists of a pocket knife had the grate hanging open, and the Winchesters were in the ventilation system. Mission one, success.

“You take point.” Dean huddled against the side of the vent and let Sam squeeze past him. It was tight, but he fit.

Now that they were dealing with access points and servers, they were in Sam’s expertise. They’d both spent two hours last night huddled over floorplans of this building, but while Dean was more concerned with patrol patterns, Sam was figuring out how they accomplished with their dad’s orders. It was the reason they worked so well.

The Winchesters didn’t always get along, it was true. In their day-to-day lives they coexisted, they handled each other but while Sam hung around in whatever apartment they’d holed up in on his computer, Dean would ruthlessly and relentlessly seek new ways of almost getting himself killed. Dean was a bully, Sam wanted to be a professor. Dean wanted to move out of New Detroit someday and go to the wastes where wheeled vehicles were still legal and you could see the sky. Sam wanted to live ND-98 with a top class zip code working as a tenured professor for the most prestigious university in the region.

But that was outside the mission. Here inside the job, there was none of that life goal bullshit, just the primal desire to stay alive and out of jail. They forgot their differences because they were brothers, and they were trained for this. The only thing that mattered was what the job was. They both knew what had to be done, and they agreed on that much perfectly.

Dean loved the job. It was the clarity he thrived off of.

They made their way through the Database Center. There were three possible locations to check, each a subset of a server room. Only one of them would allow Sam access to the files they needed, so they would have to tick through them until they found the right one. Dean didn’t appreciate that unknown factor in the plan, but the search went pleasantly smoothly despite his doubts. Uncertainties generally had the habit of backfiring in the Winchesters’ faces. Their father’s rules for any mission included knowing every detail by heart, or else probably get killed.

It was a lucky, smooth job by those standards. The first spot they checked didn’t work, but it was also absolutely deserted. They were in and out in a matter of seconds, just after Sam dropped some pre-packaged program he’d brought along in Jess to screw up the video cameras temporarily. The next room they reached was just as empty, although Dean was sure he heard voices from the corridor outside the room. They came in through a vent opening near the floor, quiet and careful. Dean went for the door while Sam set himself up beside the large floor-to-ceiling walls of silicone technology on the other side of the cramped room.

Dean pressed his ear to the door, listening. The voices were quickly fading into the distance, leaving an eerie, humming silence in their wake. The corridor was empty, from what he could tell. He waited a few seconds, then eased the door open to check.

Nothing to the left, nothing to the right. They were safe.

He closed the door and locked it. Across the room, Sam had plugged Jess into some socket on the server, had her tablet face in one hand and was quickly tapping through menus with the other. A dialogue window of “downloading,” appeared across Jess’ screen. Sam sat back on his heels. “Alright. Now we wait.”

“Great,” Dean said. “I’m, uh…” He pointed at the door. “I’ll be out there. Call me when you’re done.”

Time to explore.

Dean slipped out of the room before Sam could stop him. The corridor beyond was empty, sterile clean and brightly lit. To his left was an unremarkable stretch of hallway, then a sharp corner that cut off his line of sight. To his right was more unremarkable hallway, a closed door, and a certain large crate resting on a partially functioning hover plate.

He narrowed his eyes. Consciously, he knew he shouldn’t get curious. That was dangerous, and that crate had absolutely nothing to do with the real reason why they’d snuck into the building. But there was no one else in the hallway, Sam had nuked the entire camera system for the next fifteen minutes, and it was just so _tempting_.

As he approached, he could finally read the labels along the top edge of the crate. Some of it was the basic stuff, “this side up” and “careful -- fragile,” things like that. But there was also “CLASSIFIED,” stamped in red letters. Beneath that was a much smaller, discreet project title. It read: “Project CASTIEL.”

Well, it said classified on it. That meant Dean had to open it. Obviously.

He flipped open his pocket knife, split the edge of the crate open with the very tip, then used the knife as a crowbar to pry a gap in the heavy wood. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t shove back into place, just enough to get a good look inside. Once he could get a good angle, he pulled out his pen flashlight and poked around.

The crate was surprisingly empty. Some plastic-wrapped objects tied down to the floor of the crate, an oblong shape that looked like a computer tower, and a small black box no bigger than Sam’s sPC. It wasn’t quite a box, though, more like a twelve sided die. He squeezed his arm through the gap, grabbed the object and pulled it out so he could examine it.

About the size of his fist, there was a panel of buttons on one side, a screen panel above it, and every other side was unremarkably plane. It felt solid in his hand, a metal casing welded together with care. This wasn’t some cheap hardware from the local convenience store. Dean pushed one of the buttons experimentally, still not quite thinking about whether poking around in confidential equipment was smart or not.

The screen hummed to life. The readout displayed a block leader booting screen, with a little progress bar underneath.

“Goddamn computers…” he muttered under his breath.

Footsteps from down the hall. Dean pocketed the thing he’d accidentally activated, shoved the crate closed with his shoulder, and hustled back for the server room. He was quick, but he knew he barely made it. He locked the door behind him, hoping whoever rounded that corner back there hadn’t thought to look at the closing server room door.

“We gotta go Sammy,” he said.

“Almost done,” Sam said. He was typing something into Jess’ interface. “Just another minute.”

Dean pressed his lips together. “I don’t think we have another minute.”

He could hear voices on the other side of the door. Two people? It sounded like friendly chatter. They hadn’t seen him, then, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to get into the room him and Sam had holed up in.

“Systems online.”

Dean looked at his brother. “You say something?”

“Uh...nope.” Sam didn’t look up, his fingers didn’t stop moving. He was paying attention to nothing but his sPC in his lap.

“Huh.” Dean went back to the door, pressed his ear up against it to try and listen in on whoever was out there.

“Connect to server?”

“What?” Dean asked.

“Hey can you be quiet?” Sam muttered. “Trying to concentrate.”

“Connect to server?”

The voice was coming from inside the room, and Dean was sure he wasn’t just hearing things. It was just a little tinny, sort of mechanical. He scanned the shiny surfaces of the server chassis, the blinking lights and humming fans. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Connect to server?”

It was coming from _his pocket_. Dean pulled out the black thing he’d stolen from the crate, flipped it around until he could see the screen, and grimaced just a little. The screen read the same question: “connect to server?”

“Uh...no?” Dean mumbled.

“No connection established. Commencing protocol: boot CASTIEL."

“Dean what the hell is that?” Sam hissed.

“I don’t know, I found it.” Dean stuffed the thing in his jacket pocket in the hopes of muffling its obnoxiously loud voice, and gestured vehemently at Jess. “Can we go?”

“Yeah--but you put that back,” Sam said. “We aren’t taking anything out of here, you don’t know what that is.”

“It was in the box out there.” Dean pointed at the door. “There are _people_ out there now. Let’s just worry about it later.”

“Why were you going through boxes?!” Sam’s whisper hit an audible pitch.

The conversation between the guards outside their server room went silent. A muffled, “did you hear something?” reached the Winchesters, and that was an immediate red signal. Time to move.

Sam clipped Jess back onto his belt, slammed the access port closed and sprinted for the ventilation shaft. Dean was close behind him, tugging the cover closed. He didn’t bother with the screws, not enough time, he just banked on the staff being too lax to notice the small detail. They were long gone before the server door opened, sliding their way through the vents, trying to stay silent. The way out was much shorter than the way in, they knew exactly where they were going. They were basically home free.

“CASTIEL is online.”

Except for the automated voice coming out of his pants.

Dean ignored it.

“Hello?”

“Dean is that an AI?”

Dean stopped, propped up on his elbows and the wall of the ventilation shaft. He pulled the object from his pocket and examined the glossy display, befuddled. “Maybe?” he said. “Hey, uh...go mute. Can you do that?”

The voice cut out, but the display read: “Affirmative.”

Well, that was one problem solved. He put the AI back in his pocket and looked up at Sam expectantly.

“Dean you _cannot_ steal an AI,” Sam whispered.

“Not now Sammy, keep going.” He reached up and shoved his brother forward.

They got through the ventilation system as fast as humanly possible. Dean figured caution was out the window with a computerized voice announcing where they were, and really the faster they got out of the building, the better. The brothers emerged in a lower ventilation exhaust pipe, skirted a thin ledge that ran horizontally around the CitiNet building, and climbed up into the scaffolding support to the same tram tracks they’d crossed to get in. Dean kept them both running until they were nearly five blocks away from the scene of the crime, following the tram tracks until they hit a bustling shopping complex. On the other side of the complex was a nice hidden alcove between two buildings, something between an alley and a private parking lot. Personal vehicles had been outlawed years ago, so spots like this one existed only to collect dust.

“Okay. Okay, now get rid of that thing,” Sam said. He rested his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.

Dean pulled the AI out again. The screen blinked at him hopefully. “Hello. I am CASTIEL,” the screen read.

“Hi,” Dean said. Talking to inanimate objects made him feel a little nuts, but he rolled with it. “I’m Dean,” he offered.

“Hello Dean. Shall I register you as my administrator?” the text read.

“Uh...okay? What’s an administrator?” He frowned.

“Dean, wait--what are you doing?” Sam came up to read over Dean’s shoulder. “Don’t set anything up, we’re throwing it away. They can probably track this thing, we shouldn’t have taken it.”

That was a very good point. Dean didn’t make a habit of stealing things he knew nothing about, anyway, let alone things that had potential tracking devices built into them.

“Negative,” the text read. “Server contact has not been enabled. No one can track this unit.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” Dean said.

“We still should throw it away,” Sam said.

“May I enable volume, Dean?” the text read.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Dean,” Sam growled.

“Hush Sammy, I wanna hear it out first. What you got, little guy?”

“Dean, your face and voice are logged as my administrative user. There is no other individual with permission to access my startup settings, unless you grant them administrative privilege,” Castiel explained. “I cannot logistically be a danger to you.”

“But you were in a high-security government center. Why?” Sam asked.

“I am not sure,” Castiel said.

“They’re gonna come looking for you,” Dean sighed. “Can you just erase me as administrator?”

“That is not possible without a complete reset.”

“Well...can you do that?” Dean asked.

“A reset will erase my current state.”

Dean and Sam looked at each other. “Is that...bad?” Sam asked.

“I do not want to be erased.”

The boys stared at Castiel, both of them wide-eyed. The AI was just a box, a black polished chassis with a tiny screen and some useless buttons. But the voice coming out of that box had just told them it didn’t want to die.

“Hang on,” Dean said. “Just gonna put you down for a second.”

Leaving the AI’s box on one end of the alley, the brothers moved to the other side, just out of earshot. Hopefully. Sam had gone pale, Dean stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried really hard to pretend that he wasn’t massively weirded out.

“I didn’t think AIs could want shit,” Dean said.

“They can’t, they’re AIs.” Sam parroted the mantra of every software developer in the city. The AIs were unfeeling machines that could talk and reason, but were still just computers. They took an input, and produced an output. Nothing else.

“Okay but they also can’t lie,” Dean said. “Isn’t that one of the mandates?”

“Also true.”

They both looked back at the small black box on the filthy, trash-strewn ground. “So we should keep him,” Dean said. He said it like it was the only given conclusion. Obviously they had to keep him, like the AI was a wayward dog with nowhere else to go.

“I did not say that,” Sam said. He didn’t have even half the conviction he’d had five minutes ago, though.

“Yeah but I call the shots. So.” Dean smirked, winked at Sam, then strolled back over toward Castiel.

“What is Dad gonna say?” Sam snapped.

Dean stopped short. His shoulders hiked up into one solid line of built-in tension. A moment of quiet deliberation passed. Then, “sorry, little guy. We can’t take you with us.”

“Please do not leave me here,” Castiel said. “I can be of use to you, Dean.”

“Sam’s right.” Dean shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to take you.”

“I am not a danger to you. I am built to serve and protect my administrator. Please, allow me to serve my purpose.” Like most AI, Castiel’s voice was mechanically flat. That wasn’t the weird part, Dean heart mechanical voices every day. What really pulled at him was how he could almost hear something else in that voice. Some substance he’d never heard a machine throw at him before.

For some reason he didn’t care to dwell on, walking away from that black box was difficult. More difficult than breaking into a government-protected storage facility, or shooting down a Mist Hopper on a single digit level at night. Dean didn’t walk away from people that needed help as a rule, he was a fucking good guy and he saved lives. That’s what they did.

Of course, he was having a fit of morality over a damn machine. It was an AI. And Sam was absolutely right, keeping it was against every one of their father’s rules. They couldn’t take it back to the apartment. He shouldn’t have even grabbed it in the first place.

“Sorry,” he said. He smiled, and he felt like an idiot because he was fake-smiling at a computer program.

Dean turned and bolted before he could change his mind. Sam breathed a sigh of relief, and followed. They left a single black box behind them, sitting quietly amidst crumpled plastic bags and paper cups.

 

 

 

 


End file.
